Interview with Subhash Chanda, Co-Founder, Creatist

Please note that the interview has not been edited.

1. What would be an elevator pitch for someone who does not know about

your company?

Creatist is a real-time, active learning enterprise tool that enables instructors address the mundane pain points in teaching by managing the entire learning cycle that includes

– content management, security and delivery

– enhancing interaction

– tracking students’ activities

How it works

1. An instructor uploads content, which can be readings, videos or activities before class
2. Students can use any platform on any device to access content.
3. As the students play with the content the instructor gets reports on how the content is being used.
4. In the classroom, students can bring in their laptops, tablets, smart phones and the instructor can effectively use tools like text responses, polls, quizzes, and screen shares to make it engaging.

2. What is your company’s core value proposition? What problem are you solving and for whom?

Creatist is the only solution to handle certain crucial problems that make using technology in teaching easier.

Instructors, especially in institutes refrained from using technology due to the amount of distraction that devices brought into the class. In addition to that poor internet connectivity is a huge issue, especially in India.

Due to these reasons a number of organizations have focused on building solutions that work in a ‘closed’ local environment. Their solutions can control learner devices remotely in a local setting and that also takes care of an unreliable internet connection. Also, the instructors could control access to content to prevent unauthorized copy.

But installing such systems has been an expensive affair. Moreover, there were dependencies on specific pre-configured learner devices. Organizations had to buy as many devices as there were students. That was again very expensive.

This problem could be solved with a back-end that could interact with any device over the web while not compromising on the crucial aspects of distraction and poor connectivity.

Creatist has 13 pending patent claims that solve the issues of poor connectivity, distraction, content management and dependency on devices at the same time making it the most practical tool for instructors to use in their teaching process. (See the Image above)

3. How do you plan to check on the user satisfaction?

Team Creatist is and will always be in the field of providing a technology solution, not a stand-alone product. We know that instructors using Creatist is only the first step towards a successful implementation. We ensure user satisfaction through the following steps:

Continuous Support: Customer education videos and hands on support helping instructors use the system more effectively

Impact Estimation: We measure the impact of Creatist implementation by tracking parameters like time spent in routine processes of maintaining content, student participation levels, student performances and feedback from stakeholders.

4. Why are you passionate about this company? What is your vision?

Having been instructors ourselves we were always on the lookout for effective tools to make our work easier. We tried a number of great tools, but most of them fail not because they are not good, but because of the practical constraints during implementation. That motivated us to create a system that takes care of the practical implementation issues and Creatist was born. As instructors we realize how important and effective a tool Creatist can be for other fellow instructors and believe that its adoption will be a great value add. That is what makes us passionate about our solution and the company.

We long to see Creatist as one of the most effective tools for instructors. Creatist should be able to enable any instructor anywhere to convert a classroom to a ‘smart’ classroom with no additional investment in hardware.

5. What is the stage of the product? Where do you see Creatist in 6 or 12 or 18 months from now?

The beta version of Creatist is already out and we have 7 enterprise clients using the system. We aim to add 50 enterprise clients in the next 12 months. On the development front we plan to develop Learning Tools

Interoperability compliances, plugins for well-knows learning systems like Moodle and Edmodo, implement more active learning frameworks and focus on enhancing user experiences. We envision the addition of 12 more full time resources in technology and sales to reach our target.